Sorry for the length. I'd write a tl;dr but I can't stomach the idea of
people reading random shit online being picky about their time.
I try not to generally opine too much. I think maybe I'm too
cynical, too weary of ideologues when I usually just see shades of gray,
too ambivalent given the fact that I feel "public" knowledge (including
my own) is painfully devoid of the real complexities that make these
issues difficult to solve.
But I've been feeling strangely compelled to say something on this issue
and this movie because it feels kind of personal. I have several close family members
that have spent significant portions of their career (from teaching to counseling to administration) in California
public education for the last 40 years.
(My opinion, however, is based on my observations of their
experiences, but doesn't necessarily directly reflect their own beliefs.)
Now, this is a simplified model, of course, but there seems to me to be
this function that (roughly) determine's your "success", using
the common score-based or elite-college-acceptance-based measure, in
educational pursuits:
S = ?I + ?F + ?P + ?T
S is Success
I is Intelligence ("Nature" IQ, Personal Ambition, etc.. innate properties)
F is Family Factors ("Nurture", Education of Parents, Expectations, etc)
P is Peer Group (aka, the ambient F + I of your adjacent students)
T is Teaching (quality of instruction, instructional program, instructional personnel)
They're not entirely independent, but close enough to do fake science. For
the sake of argument, let's say "I" is fixed for each individual,
so I'm ignoring it.
The big question, it seems, is what exactly the constants are at each question mark.
I believe these films and essays and ponderances and political campaigns
that focus so entirely on the "T", are focusing on the wrong thing. It probably
has the smallest constant--and the least impact, positive or negative.
Granted: there are numerous, valid arguments to make about tenure being terrible. There
are myraid complaints that can be fairly leveled against unions. Yes, public
educational programs can sometimes be uninspired, obsolete, and unambitious.
But fantastic teachers in "bad schools" do worse (in their students' aggregate
S terms) than apathetic teachers
in "good schools." If you talked to teachers, and they were in
a candid mood, my guess is you'd discover this is widely accepted.
They know how hopeless it can be to fight upstream in a "bad school"...
and that's because the F and P factors are stacked against you, and those
constants are much larger.
Teachers, even good teachers, seldom can trump the influence of family and peers.
If we take the charter schools in the film as an example, I think self-selection bias is
at play. It really fits _perfectly_ with the forumla and the low-T-constant theory:
The parents who elect to enter the lottery are exhibiting a strong "F" factor, and,
if they succeed in winning a slot, their child enters an environment with a
bunch of other kids from high-F families, resulting in a great "P".
And yes, the teachers might be better too, and the instruction might be better.
But the teachers themselves are self-selecting! The very act of teaching at a school
where people fight to get in generally provides a student body full of willing students
coming from encouraging families. Of course those kids will learn!
And the "better" the teacher is, the more mobile they often are and the
better shot they have at the "good" teaching jobs.. aka, the classrooms
full of willing students.
Granted, there are amazing, indefatigable teachers who spend a career teaching in "bad" classrooms,
but they're the exception, not the rule. In my observation, the common case
is enthusiastic, smart, well-educated young teachers can stick it out for a few years.
Then, they're human after all, they capitulate, exhausted, and drag their
shattered ideals to a different school with a more receptive
classroom environment (if they remain in teaching at all). It's job satisfaction; it's self-preservation. (Analogy:
generally, great hackers don't want to be test engineers even if that's
possibly where they could do the most good.)
I say: the real problem is cultural (and literally, cultural, not racial).
Maybe, it's who our heros are, and our parents' heros are, and the dubious-expected-outcome
nature of the "American Dream." Maybe it's what's viewed as "the way out" by older
brothers and sisters and friends. Maybe's it's a generation's assumption that the last 100 years of American prosperity was inevitable, predestined, God-given, and not the product of a whole damn lot of work by their predecessor citizens. Hell, I dunno, cause figuring that out is the
hard part that probably has many potential answers.
If you really look at all those other countries that ourscore the US--I think it's worth
examining the cultural assessment of the value of study. The classrooms, the teachers,
the salaries, and the very students, are a natural outgrowth of that.
But that means it's the F, and consequently the P that have the biggest constants.
The T is--honestly--noise. A blip in the trend line. Good teachers can
accelerate good students, but they don't make them.
So why isn't this the predominant dialog?
Teachers and teaching are an easy scapegoat because, yes, they have evident problems,
and because it's sort of deceptively intuitive that if people aren't learning,
it's because they're not being taught. But I think, really, the criticism centers on them because
teachers aren't us--every family, and critically, every voter. People want an outlet
for their anger when Americans are undereducated. But what politician will face
the camera and say to the voting population "it's mostly your fault"? Who wants to go see a movie where the audience is the villain? (Aside: actually, that sounds kind of rad.)
So, shades of gray reality check: I have no idea what the answer is, but the first step
seems to be ensuring we've actually identified the problem. That's the programmer in
me talking.
To take your analysis one more step, I would like to break out the "I" component of your model a bit further. The "I" could comprise of "N" (inner nature/general intelligence) and "B" behavior, as I believe behavior can fluctuate independently of inner nature/intelligence and so should perhaps not be grouped.
Most behavior (B) early on arises out of primary influences. These influences are mostly people who one idolizes or looks up to, which depends some on one's inner nature (N). For some, the family (F) is the main influence and role model, other times friends/peers (P) are, and other times other societal influences (movies, media, community, etc.) are the leading influencers. Within schools, where a large part of a child's life is spent, teachers (T) are the primary influencers.
Given this, and given that influencing children is easier than influencing parents/adults/community/media, reeducating or focusing on teacher quality sounds like a good option. The "T" improvement would then improve the "B", the "B" improve the "P" and "F", and life would be very hypothetically good.
S = ?F + ?P + ?B + ?T + ?N
So here I'm not saying that teachers are a primary fault for the problems, however my main point is that I do believe they can supply massive positive influence (just like the P and F can), which in most cases they aren't doing. Perhaps this shows that the role of a teacher needs to be rethought from authoritative instructor focusing on knowledge transfer; to friend, mentor, care-taker, and personal guide to each individual in hopes of supplying inspiration.
Right. Let's not overlook the fact that T can influence both B and P. The equation is nonlinear, and IMO dominated by cross-terms.
Teachers and teaching methods that are engaging, for example, will tend to promote better behavior within the classroom. Teachers and methods that inspire most of the class to think learning is "cool" and worthwhile will improve the whole peer group. There is a lot of feedback involved. Unfortunately, as you point out, the expected "role of a teacher" isn't really well geared to produce excellent teachers using excellent methods.
Don't apologize for the length. It's a brilliant and inspired analysis. If everyone who had something significant to say would refrain from saying it because of its length, we'd be poorer on the aggregate. Thank you for sharing it.
IIRC in "freakonomics" (and underlying papers) quite a bit of time is spent analyzing why kids are successful or not, and proving (for economists' values of "proving") that peer influence is by far the most discriminating factor, even above family.
So the function that "seem to be" was at least also statistically recongnized and studied :)
(Also, it would point in the direction that what is needed for better education is a more homogeneous mix of the kids, I guess)
Yeah, I remember that from freakanomics. I'd imagine there's an age where the monotonically-decreasing F and monotonically-increasing P line cross on the plot--maybe middle school years...
>The big question, it seems, is what exactly the constants are at each question mark.
I hate to do this, but mathematically it wouldn't matter what those individual constants are since they're all being multiplied together. The equation you want probably looks more like
This is a much better argument than is usual in these discussions. But I think it suffers from a common flaw: your observation that the students of good teachers in bad schools tend to do less well those of poor teachers in good schools.
This metric is not that useful, for reasons you correctly identify. What would be useful (as far as evaluating teaching goes) but which people seem quite averse to measuring, is the rate of relative improvement, ie the first derivative of aggregated test scores over time.
I'm not sure it suffers that flaw--I may not have articulated it well, but my point wasn't that teaching cannot be improved, or these methods do not improve it. Or that it's not worthwhile to improve it... it certainly is! (implied: and your method may very well be a valid way to achieve that improvement)
It's a re-examination of goals, in a way. Improving teaching is a goal, but only so much as it serves to better educate students. So: is that the largest component in the US's current production of poorly educated students?
If I were making a movie, to invoke emotion and to inspire people (read: wide audiences) to think and to change, is that the most valuable way I could challenge the audience? Is that the part of the equation with the largest impact? I'm arguing it isn't.
I see what you mean, but it's the only part we can solve via education policy. Important factors like economics or revenue stability need attention too but are outside the control of educators.
I try not to generally opine too much. I think maybe I'm too cynical, too weary of ideologues when I usually just see shades of gray, too ambivalent given the fact that I feel "public" knowledge (including my own) is painfully devoid of the real complexities that make these issues difficult to solve.
But I've been feeling strangely compelled to say something on this issue and this movie because it feels kind of personal. I have several close family members that have spent significant portions of their career (from teaching to counseling to administration) in California public education for the last 40 years. (My opinion, however, is based on my observations of their experiences, but doesn't necessarily directly reflect their own beliefs.)
Now, this is a simplified model, of course, but there seems to me to be this function that (roughly) determine's your "success", using the common score-based or elite-college-acceptance-based measure, in educational pursuits:
S = ?I + ?F + ?P + ?T
S is Success
I is Intelligence ("Nature" IQ, Personal Ambition, etc.. innate properties)
F is Family Factors ("Nurture", Education of Parents, Expectations, etc)
P is Peer Group (aka, the ambient F + I of your adjacent students)
T is Teaching (quality of instruction, instructional program, instructional personnel)
They're not entirely independent, but close enough to do fake science. For the sake of argument, let's say "I" is fixed for each individual, so I'm ignoring it.
The big question, it seems, is what exactly the constants are at each question mark.
I believe these films and essays and ponderances and political campaigns that focus so entirely on the "T", are focusing on the wrong thing. It probably has the smallest constant--and the least impact, positive or negative.
Granted: there are numerous, valid arguments to make about tenure being terrible. There are myraid complaints that can be fairly leveled against unions. Yes, public educational programs can sometimes be uninspired, obsolete, and unambitious.
But fantastic teachers in "bad schools" do worse (in their students' aggregate S terms) than apathetic teachers in "good schools." If you talked to teachers, and they were in a candid mood, my guess is you'd discover this is widely accepted.
They know how hopeless it can be to fight upstream in a "bad school"... and that's because the F and P factors are stacked against you, and those constants are much larger.
Teachers, even good teachers, seldom can trump the influence of family and peers.
If we take the charter schools in the film as an example, I think self-selection bias is at play. It really fits _perfectly_ with the forumla and the low-T-constant theory:
The parents who elect to enter the lottery are exhibiting a strong "F" factor, and, if they succeed in winning a slot, their child enters an environment with a bunch of other kids from high-F families, resulting in a great "P".
And yes, the teachers might be better too, and the instruction might be better. But the teachers themselves are self-selecting! The very act of teaching at a school where people fight to get in generally provides a student body full of willing students coming from encouraging families. Of course those kids will learn!
And the "better" the teacher is, the more mobile they often are and the better shot they have at the "good" teaching jobs.. aka, the classrooms full of willing students.
Granted, there are amazing, indefatigable teachers who spend a career teaching in "bad" classrooms, but they're the exception, not the rule. In my observation, the common case is enthusiastic, smart, well-educated young teachers can stick it out for a few years. Then, they're human after all, they capitulate, exhausted, and drag their shattered ideals to a different school with a more receptive classroom environment (if they remain in teaching at all). It's job satisfaction; it's self-preservation. (Analogy: generally, great hackers don't want to be test engineers even if that's possibly where they could do the most good.)
I say: the real problem is cultural (and literally, cultural, not racial). Maybe, it's who our heros are, and our parents' heros are, and the dubious-expected-outcome nature of the "American Dream." Maybe it's what's viewed as "the way out" by older brothers and sisters and friends. Maybe's it's a generation's assumption that the last 100 years of American prosperity was inevitable, predestined, God-given, and not the product of a whole damn lot of work by their predecessor citizens. Hell, I dunno, cause figuring that out is the hard part that probably has many potential answers.
If you really look at all those other countries that ourscore the US--I think it's worth examining the cultural assessment of the value of study. The classrooms, the teachers, the salaries, and the very students, are a natural outgrowth of that.
But that means it's the F, and consequently the P that have the biggest constants. The T is--honestly--noise. A blip in the trend line. Good teachers can accelerate good students, but they don't make them.
So why isn't this the predominant dialog?
Teachers and teaching are an easy scapegoat because, yes, they have evident problems, and because it's sort of deceptively intuitive that if people aren't learning, it's because they're not being taught. But I think, really, the criticism centers on them because teachers aren't us--every family, and critically, every voter. People want an outlet for their anger when Americans are undereducated. But what politician will face the camera and say to the voting population "it's mostly your fault"? Who wants to go see a movie where the audience is the villain? (Aside: actually, that sounds kind of rad.)
So, shades of gray reality check: I have no idea what the answer is, but the first step seems to be ensuring we've actually identified the problem. That's the programmer in me talking.